Merlin Chain (MERL) is listed on the compliant exchange HashKey. What new opportunities will it bring to the industry?

24-04-18 19:05

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Original source: Crypto Researcher

Hashkey Global, the first compliant exchange for retail investors in Hong Kong, will launch the Merlin Chain token $MERL this week.

As an emerging BTC Layer2, Merlin Chain has exceeded 3.5 billion US dollars in TVL in two months since its launch, with more than 200 DApps deployed and built, unprecedented funds, traffic and topic, and is known as the "mysterious power from the East".

So far, Hashkey Global has only approved 20 mainstream currencies, and $MERL will become its first new currency to be launched.

This is a brilliant move. Merlin Chain has been recognized by compliant exchanges with its prosperous ecology, solid community and technical security, and may be able to open up a hole for cryptocurrency to penetrate into a wider range of mainstream users. The battle for $MERL to go online is not just a battle for itself, but also very important for HashKey, the Bitcoin ecosystem, and even the entire Hong Kong Web3.

The first trial of a compliant exchange outside of mainstream currencies

In August 2023, HashKey announced the upgrade of licenses No. 1 and No. 7, thus officially becoming the first licensed exchange for retail investors in Hong Kong.

Compliance means layers of supervision, layers of insurance, and a conservative listing strategy. Looking at HashKey's existing 20 projects, most of them are mainstream currencies such as BTC, ETH, stablecoins, and Ethereum's head public chain. Merlin Chain seems to be a little different among them: the only new coin that "just debuted" and the only Bitcoin ecosystem project (except BTC itself).

$MERL is listed on HashKey, tearing a hole.

A brilliant move: Let mainstream users invest in their first altcoin in life

Due to its compliance advantage, HashKey covers a market that does not overlap with mainstream exchanges.

Currently, global cryptocurrency investors can be divided into three circles, with different entry barriers and participation depths, and the scale gradually decreases:

1. Users who invest in exchanges that hold local compliance licenses;

2. Users who invest in mainstream centralized exchanges that have not obtained a license (Binance, OKX, Bybit, etc.);

3. Users who hold hot wallets and can participate in on-chain interactions.

Among them, 2 and 3 constitute the active users in the currency circle that we are familiar with. But beyond this, the mainstream market in the outer circle is still very large.

The typical user portrait of HashKey is more of large capital investors from traditional industries. They recognize the influence of the founder Xiao Feng in the mainstream financial circle, as well as the compliance and orthodoxy of HashKey, and the currency with the most investment is also Bitcoin. According to HashKey's trading market data, BTC-related trading pairs account for more than 70% of the trading volume.

Mainstream users are of completely different magnitudes in terms of base, amount of funds, and diamond hands. The launch of $MERL, a new coin in the Bitcoin ecosystem, has facilitated these mainstream investors to buy their first altcoin in their lives. This is not only a great opportunity for Merlin, but also for the Bitcoin ecosystem and the entire cryptocurrency field to penetrate a wider range of users.

Why $MERL: Ecosystem and security constitute the fundamentals of public chains

Ecological prosperity and technical security constitute the fundamentals of public chains. For compliant exchanges, security is of paramount importance. As an emerging and growing Layer2, Merlin Chain performs quite well in these two aspects.

Long-termism, community first, and ecological prosperity

Merlin Chain is often considered to have the best chance to compete with ETH L2, which represents Western power, with its outstanding growth momentum and ecological prosperity. This is inseparable from the community foundation brought by long-term cultivation.

Gaining recognition from the Bitcoin native community: Of the more than $3.5 billion TVL on the Merlin mainnet, 91% comes from Bitcoin native assets, including 58% of BTC and 33% of Ordinals assets.

Growing communities from the bottom up through successful asset issuance: The Merlin team is well aware of the market's rigid needs and the key to building a strong community. From Recursiverse to Bitmap Explorer to BRC-420, the miracle of the blue box skyrocketing 360,000 times, and the flourishing 420 asset ecosystem such as music boxes and dragon balls, Merlin has a solid community foundation at its inception, and is also fertile soil for native applications.

Prosperous and practical application ecology: Currently, Merlin Chain has more than 200 DApps deployed, covering games, DeFi, infrastructure, trading markets, social networking and other traffic positions that public chains must compete for. There are many OG teams from niche tracks, including LayerZero, Pyth, Cobo, MOBOX, iZUMI, etc.; there are also native innovations that have emerged completely from Merlin, such as Unicross, BitSmiley, Surf Protocol and other applications.

Technical aspects are added layer by layer to ensure institutional-level fund security

Merlin Chain has devoted absolute resources to security. In addition to giving priority to security in every link of its own architecture design, it continues to increase its investment after achieving ecological success:

Architectural design is added layer by layer to ensure security and transparency: adopt a multi-token staking Oracle node system to resist single point failures through decentralized power and data transparency; share DA layer security with Celestia; verify the first layer and inherit the security of Bitcoin.

Achieve institutional-level fund security through Cobo: Currently, all assets on Merlin are managed by Cobo's MPC wallet solution. With its private key encryption and sharding technology, Merlin Chain achieves institutional-level security.

Merlin Security Committee jointly audits ecological projects: In order to allow users to safely participate in on-chain interactions, Merlin has established the Merlin Security Committee in conjunction with several security companies including SlowMist to conduct strict audits of its ecological projects and jointly protect them.

On-chain monitoring through a third-party independent platform: Merlin supports users to jointly supervise through a third-party independent platform. For example, through mistTrack, a security product under the SlowMist team, you can query the on-chain data of Merlin ecological projects, monitor and track suspicious addresses, etc.

Good for Bitcoin L2 Narrative: Leading Projects Lead Ecosystem Expansion

From last year to now, the Bitcoin ecosystem has experienced several fluctuations, and the narrative has changed several times. Now it is at a critical moment. Funds and institutions are looking for new opportunities here, and the market has reached a consensus that BTC Layer2 is a key outbreak point.

In any track, leading projects must shoulder the responsibility of going out of the circle, making the cake bigger and letting new blood in. This is also a milestone that Merlin Chain continues to break through: the amount of funds surpassed Ethereum L2 in a short period of time, and the licensed and compliant exchanges were launched, bringing continuous growth, greater liquidity, and more opportunities for success to the entire industry. It is reported that MERL will be officially launched on April 19, and we will wait and see.